There are many online appointment, tasks, and calendar systems that afford easy entry, as well as time-based reminders, such as Yahoo! calendar, Google calendar, Remember the Milk, Oh don't Forget, etc. In addition, several such systems target the mobile user, including those that have software components that run on mobile operating systems. Further, some systems exploit GPS capabilities and provide location-sensitive task reminders.
The typical use of such systems requires user interaction as follows. The user must initially go to a website and signup or enroll. After enrolling, the user enters one or more reminders either in structured form, using a calendar widget, etc., or as free text, e.g. text such as, “pickup Bob, 3 pm today”. Then, the system updates its internal state, and, at the correct moment, sends a notification towards the user, and possibly other users, based on some preconfigured endpoint address or series of addresses, such as a mobile phone number. A user can continue to enter multiple reminders over time, if desired, and the system will update itself and notify the user accordingly.
In addition to various calendaring systems and sites described above, Web “mash-up” sites exist. A Web mash-up site is a site that pulls in data from various providers and presents them together, usually on a map, but not necessarily.
Current art has limitations. In particular, these systems do not distinguish, or even understand, the difference between reminders from one realm with respect to another. For example, they cannot determine whether a wellness reminder, such as “take your aspirin now”, has the same semantics as a reminder such as “your favorite TV show is on now”. Also, there is not sufficient information captured by these systems to be able to distinguish events such as meeting with a doctor as opposed to meeting with my boss, to know how to handle them and when it is appropriate to present them.
In addition, these systems offer very little human-computer interface sophistication. Typical the systems simply send Short Message Service (SMS) with some message as a payload within the SMS. The systems do not generally make inference, e.g., recognize that one condition leads to another, etc., and the handling of longer term, composite goals (sub-goals, sub-sub-goals . . . ) is not available. Accordingly, calendar and notification systems are rarely able to exploit user's fine-grained location, user's long term goals, user's short term goals, e.g. current location, or a current set of tasks in progress and to be completed. As a result, notification systems are purely reactive and do not take proactive measures or make suggestions to the user that seem intelligent, nor do they largely make notifications that were not scripted or scheduled explicitly a priori by the end-user herself. For example, these systems can suggest the next immediate task, but not beyond, and they do not understand which sorts of notifications are subsumed by others or have differing priority than others.
What is needed is a system and method capable of providing a more elaborate model of, and management method for, user context. Such a system could provide the right reminder at the right time and place, as well as mitigating conflicting and complementary reminders and events. Such context and features could be provided by, for example, performing “context mash-up”. By user “context” we mean a machine readable version of the multitude of information surrounding the daily life of a user. We are not limited by any specific type of user context so long as it is well-formed and understood. Examples of user context include user information such as phone number, calendar appointments, physical location, notes, and personal goals, e.g., on matters such as life, financial, wellness, and so on.